Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Associated Press (12.31.03) - Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Earlier in the epidemic, people with HIV were rejected for organ transplants because it was assumed they would not live long enough to justify the procedure. But since the introduction of successful antiviral therapy, liver damage has become one of the leading causes of death for people with HIV, who can also have hepatitis B and C viruses. Still, however, HIV patients were rejected as transplant candidates because doctors feared post-surgery antirejection drugs would interfere with HIV medications.
LaBolt's transplant was part of a clinical trial run by researchers at the University of California-San Francisco. The University of Cincinnati is one of 14 participating medical centers.
The study calls for performing 130 liver transplants on HIV- positive patients over the next three years. This represents less than 1 percent of the 15,000 liver transplants expected to be performed nationwide in the same period. The goal is to determine which HIV medications work best with antirejection drugs and which drug combinations to avoid post-surgery.
Across the country, 17,679 people are on liver transplant waiting lists, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Through September, 4,244 such operations were performed in 2003.
Researchers say it is too early to tell how many of the 900,000 Americans with HIV will get sick enough to need a new liver. Before the study started, about 50 people with HIV got liver transplants from 1997 to 2002 at medical centers in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Miami.
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